Could Computing World Forum 12th - 13th July 2012 /Earls court - London

Unique Networking Opportunities

 Creating new connections, developing business leads and meeting the right people is a vital part of the conference experience.

That’s why, at the Cloud Computing World Forum 2012, we’re making your networking our number one focus, giving you maximum opportunity to meet people relevant to your business, and putting you in touch with fellow IT decision-makers and potential clients.
Featuring on the unique networking program will be:
Online networking tool
A web-based forum launched 4 weeks before the show, allowing attendees to communicate and arrange meetings with one another
Meet and Greet
A pre-show drinks gathering held on the evening before the show, the 11th June 2012. A chance to meet fellow attendees and collect your conference pass in advance to skip the queues the next day.
Breakfast Club
Discuss cloud computing over coffee and croissants with our conference breakfast club. Held between 8 and 9am on both mornings of the show, you’ll get to meet with fellow delegates in our networking lounge and ask questions you have for the show alongside peers.
Passport to Prizes
With a selection of prizes on offer at various sponsor booths on the exhibition floor, your Passport to Prizes will provide the chance to get acquainted with top show sponsors, while giving yourself the opportunity to win a number of great tech gifts in the process.
Twitter Wall
Tweet meeting requests, make product queries and start discussions via the Cloud Computing World Forum Twitter wall. Watch the conversations unfold on our big screen – just remember to #ccwf
Working Lunch
We understand the increasingly diverse nature of the topics that cloud computing encompasses, so at this year’s forum our Working Lunch will be divided into table topics, allowing Gold and Diamond Pass holders to book onto a specific table and meet fellow delegates with a focused interest similar to your own.
Happy Hour
Complimentary drinks for an hour via a special announcement at the show, and a great chance to meet fellow delegates and sponsors to network.
Hall Reception and Drinks
Held between 4.30pm and 6pm, we'll be holding a sponsored drinks reception in our Networking Lounge on the first day of the show.
Awards Party
To commemorate the 3rd Cloud Computing World Series Awards, we’ll be holding a free-to-attend ceremony on the first evening of the show, where we’ll be announcing the winners of the prestigious awards and giving you an opportunity to enjoy drinks with fellow attendees.
Further details of all our networking opportunities will be mailed to attendees in the build-up to the show.

Computer forensics - Why you're not so hard to track down

I've lost count of how many TV shows centre on the forensics of crime but there seems to be an awful lot. Even during my youth, movies and TV programmes would feature fingerprinting and other techniques. Today DNA, bio samples, hair and clothing fibres often figure in the path to the truth.

It seems that people like a detective story, especially if it entails clever scientists weeding out the dark facts of a case. But, dare I say it, this analogue world has become somewhat tedious because of the limited number of scenarios.

However, there is a parallel in the digital world that involves a much wider and faster growing choice.

Today most computer crime goes unchallenged, or even unnoticed, as the web continues to expand. But the forces of good are waking up, taking notice, and increasingly having to take action. As a result digital forensics is on teh up and is every bit as challenging as its analogue forebear.

Consider for a moment all the variables that identify you and your machine should you decide to join the dark side. Sure, you can operate in some secret mode and disguise your machine, your identity, and your location, but there is still a lot of data that relates only to you.

So, it is not a matter of looking out for a single big identifier, more a large combination of seemingly insignificant properties – in effect, a multi-dimensional fingerprint.

Consider what a digital fingerprint might look like - and what follows is not a comprehensive list. It is just a taster of what we could look for if we were on the trail of some bad guy:

• Choice of font – style size
• Page formatting
• Span and use of vocabulary
• Word, phrase, slang, colloquialism, terminology use
• Sentence and paragraph structure
• Spelling and grammatical errors
• Flesch-Kincaid reading index
• Choice of software
• Language settings
• Connection type
• Carrier, ISP, networks
• Operational ports
• Update settings
• Routing
• Point, or apparent point of origin

I’m sure you get the idea in terms of the uniqueness of this data as a combinatorial identifier. It is very difficult indeed to break our regular patterns of operation and to randomise everything completely.

And even if we do attempt to do that, guess what? It involves even more patterns that just add another line to the list.

On an even more positive note: the world has far more good neurons than bad - by a long, long way.